


Unself

by vyatka



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Mild Sexual Content, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-objectification, [margaret atwood voice] male fantasies male fantasies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-05 15:36:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17921582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vyatka/pseuds/vyatka
Summary: She Who Never Blinks.





	Unself

For many, many years, Natasha has had two selves. 

Herself - Natasha actual, Natasha material. 

Unself - the Natasha who is watching herself. 

To be clear, there is the real Natasha, who brushes her hair and wraps a scarf around her neck and does equations on paper from a splits position when she is bored because  _yes, it truly is comfortable,_ and then there is the Natasha inside, watching through a keyhole. She Who Never Blinks. The Unself. She is the one who sees when Natasha angles her head in a way that is ugly. She is the one who watches when Natasha scrubs herself down in the tin tub with oily soap. Natasha sleeps and her unself is awake, disappointed by the ugly way in which she lies in bed. 

And so Natasha goes through her life with her vision split between first and third person. She sees through her eyes, and she sees through the Other eyes. The outside eyes. She surveys herself. She assumes that it is a symptom of growing up in a surveillance state, ever watched, the gaze of her leaders ever beating down on her.  _You are watched. Know that they are watching. They never look away._

Probably Unself was born from that. 

Here is how Natasha pictures her - no one ever looks at her, and no one ever sees her, so she is yellow-toothed and ragged, her hair full of mats and burrs, her skin filmy with dirt and dried sweat. Because no one ever sees her, she only does the seeing, she looks that way because she is allowed. Unself is a stranger to surveillance. She never sees herself. She only sees others. Natasha, specifically. 

No one can see into the window Natasha stands beside, but she looks at it, through a strand of loose hair. (Fix that.) She puts it behind her ear. (That makes her ear stick out.) She undoes her braid and redoes it, just to tuck the tendril away. 

She shutters the window. 

 ***

"How old are you?" 

"Seventeen," says Natasha. Her lips are blue-red, so as not to clash with her hair. Her dress is black, and the boots with their needle-thin heels go up to her knee. She wears no rouge. Her face is flushed with the effort of walking in the boots. Heel to toe. Heel to toe, watch for that patch of ice, heel to toe, ignore the burn, ignore the pain. Heel to toe, heel-toe. Take small steps; if you take big ones you'll snap an ankle like that Bolshoi girl, the one who kept dancing even as her bones cracked underneath her. 

The Polish man at her elbow doesn't speak Russian, and he thinks she doesn't, either. He thinks she is an American girl visiting Poland with friends, and he's planning to fuck her. 

Natasha - who is actually twenty-one - always says that she is seventeen to see how many men choose to step down. 

The current tally is zero. 

And as she turns to smile with her red lips at this Polish freedom fighter, she waits to see if the tally will become one. And it doesn't. He still wants to fuck her. Natasha doesn't know what she expected. Even when she was truly seventeen, it never deterred them. When she was fifteen and fourteen it never deterred them. "Russian women grow up quickly," Ivan told her. He called her a woman at fourteen. 

And it was true. And it is true. And Natasha hugs herself closer to the Polish man's arm and gives a theatrical shiver. "Gosh, I'm so cold," she says. 

He starts to unbutton his coat, and Natasha gives a tinkling giggle and shakes her head. "No, keep it on," she says. "You look so handsome. Can we go inside? The wind is so bitter." With her spare hand she tightens her collar against the nighttime breeze.

"Bitter?" He half-smiles. 

Natasha tosses her head slightly. It shows the crisp line of her jaw. Again, that elfin laugh. "Yeah, it's, like, really bad." 

"Bitter," he repeats. "Okay. My hotel is not far." 

"Great," Natasha says, effusing gratitude. It's a good thing she is so good at overriding her pain signals, because her feet are going numb. 

 ***

You can't use guns in hotel rooms. Bullets can too easily punch through walls, not to mention the noise, even suppressed. Natasha has no weapons on her. 

"Your coat?" The Pole is all gentleman, but his eyes aren't, watching her slip out of her flimsy American parka. "Some tea?" 

"Tea would be amazing." Natasha puts her forearms on her knees. (Mannish.) She sits up and crosses her legs.(Frigid.) She crosses her ankles and slightly slouches. (Fine.) 

Her sinews hat the posture. She knows how they feel. 

While he's serving the tea, she nicks him on the wrist with her watch. Not enough to hurt him. It's just a nick. Tomorrow he'll come down with a brutally persistent fever, and within three days, he will be dead. 

 ***

Natasha scrubs her face and ties her hair back. Without makeup, her eyebrows and eyelashes are pale, stubby things, and the lighting isn't kind to her skin, helpfully pointing out a burgeoning blemish on her forehead. She smooths her bangs over it. 

She changes into her shapeless gray sleepwear, her feet burning from the hours in heeled boots. The relief of taking them off always comes in a surge heavy enough to highlight the discomfort. The tight clothing isn't so bad, as long as it moves with her, but when it's something stiff that restricts her movement she can't stand it. She can't  _stand_ it. 

(Her hair being up makes it look greasy.) 

She takes her hair down and falls asleep. 

 ***

The Winter Soldier, like her, hates to be looked at. He hates to be faced head-on, even. Or looked in the eye. He wants, she knows, to exist as a flit of shadow in periphery, disappearing or falling into blindspot when you try to look at him directly. Like Unself, he wants to be the observer and never the observed. 

Natasha respects that, and doesn't look at him unless they're training together and she needs to study his movement, and in return, he doesn't look at her. That is how they exist to one another. 

Which is not to say that she doesn't know what he looks like. He's boyishly full-faced with a girlish sort of mouth, lush-lipped and red, and heavy brows over solemn blue eyes, and brown-black hair that, in this light, leans more toward black. She knows he's broad-shouldered and thick-thighed and he chews on his cheek when he's thinking. 

"Hello," he says quietly from behind her. What a soft-spoken thing he is. 

Natasha is smoking. Her one vice. And she exhales. "Hello," she says. (She looks good when she's smoking. Makes her fingers look long and artful, brings the focus in on her mouth.) 

She sees him glance at her and then look straight ahead. Inside herself, Natasha sees what he saw. She looks nice. She's wearing no makeup, but her hair is falling around her shoulders in pretty red shoals, which she did because she thought he might see her, otherwise it would be in its standard braid. She's sitting in a way that shows off the swell of her hips and he's not even seeing it, which makes her simultaneously angry and grateful. 

 ***

Even in the dark, she's not free. 

She wonders if the Soldier is. She thinks - probably. His unself is not the same as hers. She thinks that the sounds he makes when they're together like this - whimpering moans that muffle slightly when he presses his face against her skin to keep quiet - are undesigned. Organic. Like his flesh hand on her hip. 

Natasha wishes she could say the same. God damn her, why can't she produce anything  _real?_ What sort of machine is she? 

Every sound she utters is something she calculated. She even deduced what kind of moan he likes best, (the low ones, rasp and husk) and which position is his favorite (this one, her on him, chest to chest and breath to breath) and she can see herself. It's pitch-dark and yet she is watching herself through the keyhole. With his arm around her midriff, he can surely feel how small it is. Does he like it? Does he care? Men love to put their hands on her waist. If their hands are big enough, they can circle it entirely, like they're locking her in a shackle. 

She makes a gasping noise, and he gasps in return, because she's noticed he likes that, too.

What does Natasha like? What does Natasha want? 

Easy: she likes to be liked. She wants to be wanted, and her head is spinning. She pulls off silently, without wincing - 

"Natasha - ? " 

And then she takes him into her mouth and she  _knows_ that's good. 

In thirty-seven seconds, he comes. 

She wipes her mouth noisily and hears him pant-laugh and say "come here," breathily, earnestly. He's so sweet. How did he maintain that sweetness? Years of training worked hard to stamp it out, and still he ghosts his fingers over her thighs, headed toward their apex. "You, too," he says. 

"I already did," she lies. (She ignores the begging timpani of her heartbeat.) She kisses him and pulls on her shapeless gray clothes. And leaves. 

 ***

The Black Widows are beautiful. If they weren't, they washed out. Natasha was prized for being the only redhead. 

 ***

The madame puts her hands on Natasha's knee and pushes it up, widening the angle of the arabesque. "Natalia," she chastises. "Ballet must be  _beautiful._ Take the grimace off your face.  _Smile._ " 

 ***

Natalie Rushman's feet don't burn in heels. She could walk for days and not notice the blood pooling in her shoes. She can wear a pencil skirt without hating it. She is beautiful. She is so beautiful. She modeled in Tokyo.

 ***

Natasha is a master of the smirk. It makes people think she has a secret to share with them. As if Natasha would ever share a secret. 

 ***

"The famous Black Widow," he says. "And she turns out to be just another pretty face." 

Venom wells up in her, fermented and scalding. "You really think I'm pretty?" 

**Author's Note:**

> Women be projecting their issues onto fictional characters!
> 
> I'm also on [Tumblr](http://soldatka.tumblr.com/).


End file.
